Golden Boy

by Tarttelin, Abigail

  He waits.

  ‘Do you want to?’ he asks.

  I shake my head.

  He goes downstairs. I think he’s taken a day off work. Lawrence and Debbie aren’t here. No furious planning going on downstairs. Dad just sits in the living room.

  At lunch he brings me tomato soup, like I’m sick. I don’t feel like eating, but I eat it because I don’t want him to feel bad. I’m such a hassle. I’m an emotional bomb for him and Mum now. I’m the child that, when they think about me, they think about what’s beneath my pants, they think of me having sex with someone, some stranger. When they think of me they think of gross words like: ‘genitalia’, ‘womb’, ‘phallus’, ‘gonads’. He’s being so nice to me. I feel bad that I can’t feel much for anyone right now. I feel bad that I don’t feel worse that I know Dad is lonely without Mum.

  I shrug, in my head. I get selfish.

  We’re all lonely, I think. I’m always going to be alone.

  I watch movies, endless DVDs. I don’t wash. My hair gets all greasy and looks almost light brown. I sit about in my boxers and a T-shirt. I lose a bit of weight.

  It’s Friday afternoon when one of the movies finishes, and I get up. I’m bored. I think my body wants to move. I think about maybe watching Con Air in the living room, like I did with Dad one night.

  I stand up out of bed. I’m wearing a grey T-shirt and blue boxers. I look at myself in the mirror vaguely. I hate what I see now. I look rough, and dirty, and ambiguous. Not quite androgynous. It’s not quite the right word. The right word is ambiguous. Once you’re aware of something you see it everywhere. Like how I was thinking about red-haired girls this summer, when everything was normal, when nothing had gone irrevocably wrong, and I saw them everywhere.

  My dick in my boxers is too obvious. I put on long cotton jogging trousers. My chest isn’t big enough. I pull on a jumper. I sit on the floor and put on socks, because it’s cold.

  ‘Max!’

  I wait.

  ‘Max!’

  I hear Dad coming upstairs. He opens the door and the bright light from the hallway makes me shield my eyes.

  ‘Marc and Carl are here.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s almost five in the afternoon. Aren’t you going to open your curtains?’

  I don’t answer.

  ‘I told them you’re upset because your mum’s moved out,’ he says softly.

  He never calls her Karen in front of me anymore. He used to call her Karen when he talked to us about her.

  ‘You could go to the cinema with them. It’s a Friday, have some fun.’ He hesitates, then says gently, ‘Just make a bit of an effort, Max.’

  I scowl at him as Marc and Carl come up the stairs.

  ‘Alright?’ Marc says. ‘They’re doing a medley of Johnny Depp films at the cinema tonight. We’re going to see The Rum Diary. It’s on at six.’

  I brush my hair out of my eyes. ‘I’ll shower,’ I murmur.

  Sylvie

  I always take things too far down the road of brutal honesty. I’ve been with guys before who have told me bad stuff. When Toby told me about all the drugs he used to take I kept asking him and asking him all these questions, drawing the pain out bit by bit. I always want to know everything, every detail, because I feel then like it will be cathartic, I won’t be scared of more pain, it’ll be done. But every time I do that it spells the death of my relationships. After, Toby told me it just wasn’t the same. I should just have not made Max tell me about the baby. But I prodded and poked.

  It was everything at once that made me have the panic attack. Every fact was a blanket of heat and oppression that became a pile of blankets that smothered me. And I don’t care if Max is a boy or a girl or not at all. I seriously don’t care. I know Max. I know who he is. What he is is just a detail.

  After he left I started crying because I felt like I couldn’t say anything to anyone about it. I couldn’t say anything to Mum or Dad, because it’s a secret. I promised I’d keep it. I’m not that great at talking to my parents – they’re both kind of academic and ‘elsewhere’ sometimes, but when I’m scared, or when there’s a problem, generally I can go to them. But I can’t talk to anyone about this. Then I realised that’s probably how Max feels, but way worse.

  He can’t say anything to any of his friends. Marc and Carl would have a fit. The only people who know are his parents, and I think he doesn’t want to talk to them about it because it would upset them. So I want to talk to him, but I don’t know if I can handle it, being the only person he can talk to. That’s why I had the panic attack in the first place. It’s way too much for one person. I don’t know what to do.

  Max

  On the way to the cinema, passing all the Christmas lights in town, I make an effort, like my dad says. I smile at stuff and Marc and Carl tell me about the game I missed on Saturday and the training I’ve missed all week. I smile and say, ‘Great’.

  ‘He doesn’t want to hear about the game he couldn’t play, does he? You dick,’ Carl says to Marc. ‘Tell him about Olivia.’

  Carl looks over to Marc and he grins slyly, like they’re both part of this pact, this cult that has access to secrets I’ll never comprehend.

  I’m sure that’s me being paranoid, I think, and look away, straight ahead, then when Marc doesn’t say anything, I ask, ‘What about Olivia?’

  Marc clears his throat and Carl says, ‘She’s his girlfriend now.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say casually, pulling the door to the cinema back for them.

  ‘What happened with you and Sylvie?’ Carl asks.

  I join the queue for tickets. ‘Didn’t work out.’

  We’re practically alone in the cinema. I guess it’s early. The ‘Johnny Depp Medley’ turns out to be a Hunter S. Thompson medley. They’ve already shown Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, so we watch Johnny Depp faff about in Puerto Rico. When we’re in the dark, I remember what it was like to kiss Olivia. I don’t want to think about it, but it keeps creeping back into my mind. Then I think about kissing Sylvie. How she was warm and soft and had a loud laugh and groped me. How she smiled with the right side of her mouth only and joked all the time. I remember how her tongue flicked in and out of my mouth. I think about Sylvie’s lips. I think about other girls I’ve kissed. I think about all of them.

  I eat my popcorn. It tastes like cardboard.

  One day, all kisses will be memories.

  ‘Psst.’ A guy in the front row is waving at us. There’s a Christmas film on in the other auditorium, so it’s just him, his friends and us in the showing. They come over. It’s some guys from the sixth form college. I watch while Carl and Marc talk to them.

  ‘What you think, Blondie?’

  ‘Huh?’

  The college guy laughs. ‘Haven’t you been listening? You’ve been staring at me the whole time I’m talking.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘No?’

  Normally I would have been pseudo-aggressive back, but I can’t be bothered. I shrug and turn back to the movie. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ says Marc jovially. ‘He’s had a shit week.’

  ‘It’s fifteen quid for one.’

  ‘Nah, we’re OK.’

  ‘One what?’ I ask.

  The college guy turns to me. ‘A joint, deafhead.’

  He stares at me like it’s some sort of challenge. I watch him back.

  ‘Are you trying to stare me out or something, kid?’ he says, and I laugh at him, and throw him fifteen quid. He gives me a plastic bag with a twisted-up cigarette in it.

  ‘Serious?’ says Marc. ‘We’re at the cinema.’

  ‘What if we get caught?’ Carl whispers. ‘You can smell that stuff even with it not being lit.’

  The college guys move off.

  ‘So we say it was him.’ I shrug petulantly. ‘Whatever. Give me your lighter.’

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ says Marc.

  ‘Yeah but you always carry a lighter. Hand it over.�
��

  I light the joint and suck in lightly.

  Marc starts to giggle and takes it off me. He tries it too, and soon we’re both slid way down in our seats, smothering laughter. Carl gets up and walks out.

  Sometime during our chatting and giggling the movie ends.

  ‘Shit!’ Marc says. ‘I totally didn’t watch that.’

  ‘The book was better.’

  ‘There’s a book?’

  I give him a sideways look. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  Marc stands up. ‘Come on, let’s go to Pancake Café .’

  ‘Nah, I’m staying here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m just gonna sit here for a bit.’

  ‘Why? The people for the next film will be in soon.’

  ‘I know.’

  He falters. ‘I want to go out. Olivia’s going to be in town.’

  ‘So go, Marc. We’re not attached at the hip.’

  ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’ve been acting weird for two months.’

  ‘I said nothing, Marc,’ I hiss. ‘Just fuck off.’

  He waits for a moment. I watch the credits rolling. When I look over to my left, he’s gone.

  My buzz from the pot is turning into being irritated and melancholic again, especially with the cinema going quiet and dark.

  The trailers start up for the next film, and people start walking in. I sink low into my chair and try not to meet anyone’s eyes.

  Max Walker, son of Stephen Walker, stoned in the cinema.

  I wish I was more sorry that I’m not being an upstanding citizen, Mum, Dad, I say in my head. But I guess being perfect didn’t work out for me.

  My lips curl up and I almost sob in the cinema, but I hold it back and sigh, biting my lip hard to keep myself quiet. All I ever wanted was to be perfect. That sounds like a pretty big ask, but perfect means bland, inoffensive, likeable. I wanted other things too. I did want to stand out, be smart, be nice, but I tried so hard for those things that it wasn’t really like I was asking anyone for them. Really what I wanted was to be something more than the sum of my male and female parts.

  I concentrate on the screen in front of me. The first trailer is for an action movie that looks pretty cool. Then the second is for this arty film about this really horny guy who can’t talk to women, but gets with loads anyway. It made me think of phalloplasty. It’s an operation where they make your penis bigger. I remember when I was younger they said they could do it to me for free, on the NHS. I asked Dad about this the other day, when we were talking about operations. He had asked me if I still wanted the hysterectomy and all that shit. I said no. I had to come a long way to say that tiny fucking word, didn’t I? But I asked him what had happened that time when I was offered the phalloplasty. He said I was near average size anyway, and that I could have lost all feeling in it if I’d had it done. I nodded, took one of the soy banana shakes out of the fridge and went up to my room again. I didn’t know I could have lost all feeling down there.

  There were so many other occasions I wanted to ask him about, but I was embarrassed. I wanted to ask about that night when I was thirteen, what the hormones did, why exactly the ovotestis was taken out. Instead I went up to my room and played Sonic on the old Sega, like I used to when I was little.

  I think about what he said. How would I know if I was average size? The only hard one I’ve seen is Hunter’s. Everybody’s soft at urinals.

  I shift about uncomfortably. My head’s so full of the pot, it’s like a fug of fog in my frontal lobe.

  I’m ashamed of what I am and who I am, I think, looking at the back of the chair in front of me. More who I am. What I did. What I let happen.

  I think about Sylvie and how, when you really like someone, you just want a few more minutes with them. You just want to talk to them a bit more. You just want to walk them home. Even if you know it won’t work out, you just want to listen to them and watch them a bit more because they’re so nice and they smell so good. What will happen after all the girls stop talking to me? What will happen after all the minutes are over?

  I have tried not to think about it before. I wonder what other people do when no one will have sex with them. Just not have sex, maybe. Or, I guess, maybe that’s why some people go to prostitutes.

  But I could never be the type of person who has sex with prostitutes because I couldn’t do that to someone. Prostitution is so sad. Wouldn’t you just be thinking about the girl the whole time? What happened to her to make her feel like she could let people do that to her? Why does she have to do this for money?

  I don’t really feel like I’m from the right background to get into hiring prostitutes. All the people in films with issues a bit like mine (but not quite like mine, because I haven’t seen any films about intersex people) have something weird in their background, like alcoholic parents, or people that didn’t love them. They’re outsiders. But I’m not an outsider. I’m from a loving, supportive family, in the centre of a good community. No matter what Mum and Dad have done over the course of my life, I know they did things because they loved me. Even Mum. Even the operation. Even when I was angry, and saying things to hurt her, and thinking bad things about her . . . I know really that she didn’t do it for her. She did it because she thought it was the right thing to do to save me. I think about what she said to Dad. About how she loved me more than him. I feel like the worst person in the world for doing this to my parents. For splitting them up and tearing them apart from the inside, for making them have to choose between me and them, and then not even being particularly grateful to either of them. Not acting appreciative at all.

  Anyway. Prostitutes. I couldn’t just let someone inside me if I didn’t like them, particularly not now I know how it feels, after Hunter. I can’t believe that some of them like it. It must be horrible to have sex with someone you don’t like. It must be completely blank. Just empty.

  Like I feel now.

  But I guess I don’t know what I’ll feel like when I’m older. I couldn’t see myself doing that now, maybe, but think about when I’m old and in my thirties. That’s fourteen years away. That’s a long time. Oh my god. What about my forties? Fifties? Sixties?

  What am I going to do when I get older? Will this emptiness just grow and grow? Will I never be able to have sex with people because they’ll all be grossed out at the way I look, and then will I go to prostitutes, just once, at first, because I just want to do it once, to know what it feels like to be inside someone, to be cuddled up to someone, and then what if I go more and more, because I feel so empty without that feeling, now I know how it feels?

  I shift uncomfortably in the cinema seat. There are more people in for this screening. The trailers are still rolling. I don’t want to cry in front of them. I start to panic a little, and my breathing gets faster as I think. As I realise that I am going to be intersex my whole life. Years and years and decades, maybe for seventy years, I’ll be like this. And, unless I find someone who doesn’t mind having sex with me, I’m going to be alone all that time. I’ll probably be alone all that time. Think. How difficult it is for people to find someone they love, who likes the same things as them, who has the same values, who wants the same things out of life, and then imagine adding to that the fact that they not only have to be OK with having sex with a hermaphrodite, they have to like it.

  Without being a totally weird pervert, I add to myself.

  My cheeks are so hot, and I look up, and the movie’s started, and it’s this sex scene.

  I look up and look straight down again. I don’t watch stuff like this. Because I don’t want to know what I’m missing, what I’ll always be missing. I look up. I see breasts.

  I look down. I feel weird. I feel like I want to get out of the auditorium, but there are people on both sides of me in my row.

  I look up. I try to imagine me, in a scene like this. But I can’t.

  I look down again.

  I look
up. They’re properly mashing. I imagine Marc and Carl in a couple of years’ – no, months’ – time, able to do that, talking about it with each other, sharing in-jokes that I don’t get. And they see I don’t get them and they drift away from me and we stop being friends. There’s a lot of moaning going on. I blush. I wriggle. I put my hands in my lap and pick my fingernails, watching the figures on the screen, in the dark.

  I stand up.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  People tut. I sniff my sleeve. I smell really, overpoweringly like weed.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  I shuffle past everyone and walk quickly to the door and out. There’s a toilet and I go in it and lock the door. The light comes on automatically, and it’s just us again, me and my reflection. I turn away from him.

  The bathroom is marble. The sink is set back into the wall, on a marble bench. I lean against the wall, with the mirror on my right.

  The thing is, Dad, I think. I’m trying to hold it together. This is me trying. I really am trying.

  I look down at my Converse. My feet are too small. My hands are too small. Soon everything will be too small, and too delicate, and maybe I won’t make the football squad when I go to sixth form college, and then university. Maybe I won’t be the Max that rules the school. Maybe I’ll just be a loner, a too-androgynous, too weak to play football, too frigid to kiss loner. Then one day I’ll be nothing of my own. I’ll be an uncle to Daniel’s kids. I’ll be a provider for Mum and Dad in their old age because I’ll never have a family of my own. I’ll be the person who always has time to be there for other people. That doesn’t sound so bad. Settling for not so bad sounds OK. But, you know, it’s hard when you tried so much to make life really good.

  I look down at my purple Converse again. I look at my face sideways in the mirror. In the bathroom light, it’s much darker. It’s much older.

  I turn away and choke. I start to cry. I haven’t the whole week. I didn’t even after the operation. I try to wipe it away and be quiet so no one outside will hear and come see what’s wrong. I reach for the hand towels and try to fix my face.